Clarey also reveals the nefarious business model that teachers’ unions and universities are using to profit off you and/or your child’s worthless degree, to the tune of billions of dollars. (Hint: it involves their clever use of the word “median income” when describing your post-grad job prospects, when you should be looking at “mean income” instead.)

He also explains why grade inflation has rendered the Dean’s List a joke, why “critical thinking” is the exact opposite of what you’d expect, and why internships are (mostly) stupid. He also explodes other myths (“you need a bachelor’s degree just to get in the door”).

The story of how he went from being an over-educated security guard to making $350/hour doing something you’d never guess is an inspiration.

One quibble, though: I share Clarey’s disdain for English degrees, but he needs to hire a proofreader for his next manuscript. A second pair of eyes would have improved the authority of Worthless tenfold. (For example, “behooves” doesn’t mean what he thinks it means.)

That said, Aaron Clarey’s Worthless is a breezy read that even the most impatient young person could digest in one sitting, or in small doses. (I suggest leaving it in the bathroom.)

(KATHY SHAIDLE is a blogging pioneer who runs FiveFeetOfFury, now in its 15th year. She's been called "one of the great virtuoso polemicists of our time," by MARK STEYN. Her NEW book is Confessions of A Failed Slut (Thought Catalog, 2014).

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1.
Josh

Wish I had a few more seconds to rant about this, but not going to the *university* is one thing, you did continue your education. Even so that is not indispensible, as various examples always show us.

For me, I *wish* I could have taken a year or two between high school and college, I wasn’t really ready for it, did well enough but could have done better, but still had this Vietnam thing going on and the simple way forward was to stay in school. However, university *was* the right thing for me.

Oh no, please don’t say that. What these are, today, are basically “trade school” subjects, you stand a fair chance of *getting* a job, but they don’t pay very well, they pay MUCH worse today than twenty years ago and are sinking further. Higher paying than the zero you get for French Literature, ain’t saying much.

“Like me, he believes too many people are being pushed into getting a degree (i.e., brainwashed in junk science and political correctness at their own expense) when they should be learning a trade or just plain left alone.”

This is a joke, right?

Perhaps you’d feel differently as to what getting a degree actually does if you’d gone to university. Learning a trade and being “just plain left alone.” Ah, YES! JUST what the future of the country should be doing.

I took a B.Sc. in Physics at university. In four years at university, I only studied Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Mathematical Physics. Going in the door, it was expected I could speak at least one foreign language (French for me) fairly fluently, and that I had a good grounding in subjects like English literature, Geography, and History and general science. Yes, I didn’t go to high school in the USA, and yes, I went to high school before the rot set in.

I now work as a computer programmer. Air-conditioned environment, and no heavy lifting. Yay!

About ten years ago, outsourcing and offshoring were all the rage. Today, many of those projects are being repatriated, and mostly because of quality concerns. I know of one horror story where a large medical technology company outsourced and offshored a software development project, only to receive a crawling horror, delivered two years late, which was finally scrapped after a couple of years attempted recovery. Tens of millions – if not hundreds of millions – of dollars down the drain.

While all this outsourcing and offshoring was going on, American college students turned away from technology to things like law and business. Nowadays there’s a relative scarcity of programmers, and a relative abundance of work, with the result that job and salary prospects are very, very good right now.

I suppose that’s a long-winded, anecdotal way of saying I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Sorry.

STEM are NOT “trade school subjects” You are a snob, sir, and do not understand that the people who created all the good stuff which makes modern life good and healthy and prosperous were all genii in these areas.

I have to tell you, I pretty much completely disagree with you. I’m 53, reasonably intelligent, a voracious reader (almost 6000 books since High school: I kept count), and good at solving problems. Had a serious motivation problem when young, barely graduated high school out of inattention, and dropped out of my first semester at community college. I’m currently unemployed. When I look at job descriptions online, pretty much *anything* that doesn’t involve heavy lifting requires a bachelor’s degree in something. It’s as if the world believes you either have one, or you’re a drooling idiot. I suppose if you’re self-employed or you own a business, you’re OK, but for the rest of us, not so much…

So, what’s stopping you from starting a business, then? If you’re so smart and productive, why give a cut to “the man”?
Oh, did you say you were lazy when young?
Never mind.
You want a paycheck, not a job.
Who doesn’t?

Because not everyone has the talent to start a business, or run one. If I could teach or sell, I would probably have not bothered with college. Instead, I took a Computer Science degree. Some of us are cut out to work for others, and it is a crying shame that a degree is required to get in the door. For people without connections, the dreaded HR checklist is a real stopper. I was lucky.

(Note: Most of what college did for me is to give me access to a computer so I could practice programming – the PC was new in those days – and a piece of paper to let me in the door. Admittedly, now that software engineering is more developed, I probably would have got more for the money today. But I still think he’s right.)

You were describing myself – right up to the point where you said, “I am currently unemplyed.” Perhaps because I’m a woman, but the best thing my mother “forced” me to do while young was to “make” me take business classes in high school. Typing and the like (never did learn short hand) prepared me for jobs (I won’t say career) in business offices. I don’t have a degree, and while I probably don’t make the sort of money that they do, I own my own home – paid off – I have no bills and a cushy secretary (I’m called an executive assistant, but let’s get real. I’m a secretary) job and enjoy getting up everyday to go to work.

My only advice to you would be is to step back, decide what you’d LIKE to do (what are you good at?) and then go about making yourself desireable to hire in that task. Take some online classes to achieve this. Or enroll in a community college, if that suits you. There are plenty of programs out there to give you that hand up (not hand OUT) to help you repackage yourself for the job market.

seriously. if you’ve read 6,000 books, go write reviews, and put them up on amazon. do this as professionally as you can. you might also want to consider goodreads. at some point, you’ll start getting responses.

print out your reviews, and the responses, and go to the local paper. offer to review books or movies, or who knows what else.

this worked for two friends of mine. One took her per-review job, and turned it into a full-time job. the other turned it into a subscription service, in his little field.

As a happy dropout myself, I can say that higher education could be wonderful if wisdom was what is taught, but that is not the case, nor could it hardly be. Wisdom comes only out of experience, and experience should most naturally come out of youth, from both smart and stupid initiatives alike, in whichever order they come.

The self-taught person is one whose passion is learning, without losing sight of the primary importance of doing. If you really want to, with high school education you can study mathematics, or anything else. Mathematics was number one for me, which opened the door to any engineering discipline I had the good fortune to practice later on. Fixing old bicycles as a kid was my basic training. Tuitions are getting more expensive all the time and the quality of education is definitely not moving in proportion with the costs.

We are going to have more and more ways to educate ourselves online, at very low cost, so those who put the effort to learn how to spend their time wisely can learn whatever they need to learn on the path to the materialization of their dreams.

This where dedication and earnestness come from, universities or not. It is tragic to see folks spending huge amounts of money and see their children come back from college with less wisdom than they had when they came out of high school. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the smart employers are those who can clearly see the difference between expensive degrees and a healthy combination of ambition, attitude and integrity.

The real problem here is with the curriculum. It began in the 60s when Stanford dropped the Great Books program.

Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Literature, Mathematics, Science, and the Arts, what more does anyone need to know? Of course, you could teach yourself all of those subjects if you had the inclination. My father did. My mother did.

I was the first male to graduate from college in my family’s history. And my ancestors immigrated to Texas in 1844.

My first degree was in biology. I thought I wanted to be a national parks ranger or something. Until I found out how much that job pays and I decided to become a teacher. Better pay, summer vacations, that sort of thing.

I taught science for six years. Then I realized that the vast majority of students could not read or write, so I went back to college and earned the hated English degree. I later went to graduate school and earned an even more hated master’s degree in British Romantic Poetry and the Humanities. I don’t regret it, even though I’m still paying off my student loans.

Today I’m selling real estate, which if you’ve been paying attention to the economy is a tough row to hoe. But it’s not out of choice, rather it’s out of necessity. My father died of cancer ten years ago, and I had to resign from teaching to help my mother because she owns the company.

I enjoyed my years in college. I learned a lot. I enjoyed my years teaching. I like to think I taught my students well.

Still, the fact remains that many people don’t need a college degree. Unless you’re pursuing a professional career, such as doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher–something that requires a degree–you’re better off going to trade school. I mean, they can’t outsource mechanics, electricians, plumbers, and the like.

The best place to go when you don’t have any money is to work. It may not be at a job you aspired to or even enjoy, but that’s life. I have a friend who lives in Denver. He’s a golf pro. Needless to say, his business isn’t doing very well in this economy. He’s currently unemployed. He called last year to complain that none of the jobs he applied to paid more than $7/hour. I told him, $7/hour is a hell of a lot better than $0/hour.

In our business, a college degree is not required. In fact, I’m the only one in the office that has one, and I have three. But when we hire a new secretary or assistant, we give them this simple 100 question test. It’s mainly basic spelling and math. You’d be surprised how many college graduates cannot pass it.

We deal with millions of dollars of property every year. We cannot afford to give a job to someone who cannot pass a simple spelling and math test. That ought to tell you how much a typical college degree is worth.

Give me average with heart, and I’ll beat a team of prima donnas every Sunday. A college degree is meaningless, if you don’t have the skills to back it up.

Again, the problem here is not with the degree. It’s with the curriculum. If you cannot spell or write a complete sentence, if you cannot read with understanding or perform simple math, then who is going to hire you? We deal with contracts, legally binding contracts. Someone mispells a street name, or inverts a street number, or otherwise misprints an offer, we’re looking at treble damages. That would be three times the value of the house sold, for those of you who do not know. Would you, if you were in our position, hire someone who cannot spell or perform simple math?

Do not blame your teachers. They were hamstrung. Blame the administrators and politicians who corrupted the curriculum. When I went to school, we had spelling tests, vocabulary tests, sentence diagramming tests, and math tests every week. Back then, school was hard. And I hated my teachers, but now I’ve grown to love them. I can pass a simple spelling and math test. I can also pass a licensing exam.

The higher education bubble? It’s all going to pay the inflated salaries of adminstrators. A top-heavy beauracy, that’s what college has become. And high school, and junior high, and elementary school. Home schooling is the best approach, for the intelligent among us.

You are quite right that the problem is the curriculum. If the elite colleges and universities still had the curricula and standards they did in 1965 or so (updated only for technological changes), their graduates would be much more likely to have acquired the critical thinking, analytical, writing skills, and the basic mathematical and scientific literacy, necessary to adapt to changing needs in the workplace and to live more fulfilling lives as informed citizens.

Many people are currently pushing STEM fields with the best of intentions. There was a similar push in the decade following sputnik. However, it turned out that many young graduates in engineering and science would find themselves with about a 5 year ‘useful life’ after graduation — they would get a first job that paid well, but after 5 years or so they would be seen as out-of-date, and would be let go and replaced by the next crop of fresh young faces with the latest training.

One ought, I think, distinguish between education and training. I was fortunate enough that my family did explicitly: the undergraduate degree was primarily about obtaining — finishing and polishing, really — an education in the classics of our civilization, its history, mathematics and science, learning to think about the great ideas that have perplexed and occupied us (primarily) in the West since the ancient world. Graduate school was assumed to be necessary as a way of fitting oneself to enter one of the learned professions or to enter the world of affairs – business or government – and make ones way.

Your company is small enough not to have run afoul of Griggs vs Duke Power. Can you prove your test is not biased against minorities?

I was hired, sans degree, right out of the Marine Corps for a job in IT. Later, I would not have been able to be hired for the job I was already doing, because it was strictly “Degree Required” some time after Griggs. I went back and finished my degree later, but I don’t credit having a degree for keeping me continuously employed in the field for almost 40 years now.

A degree is a very effective, expensive and inefficient device to screen job applicants. You might do well without one. Certain opportunities will not be available to you.

Griggs vs. Duke Power says it all. Since there has to be some sort of quota (disguised as “diversity”), for the right minorities, as long as the “proper” credentials exist, then the quota will be satisfied. I have said many times, they might as well just use the principals of Oz University: as the Wizard would say: “You don’t need a brain: here is a diploma”.

An education involves doing the work to develop an educated mindset, which should help you solve problems, gain perspective, recognize bullshit, and become a good citizen. (The Humanities are supposed to be about the true and the beautiful and the good. All worthy subjects of study.)

You can do that in college; you can do that outside of college. It made sense when college was cheap. It no longer does.

Be forewarned, however: What you cannot do is educate yourself. There are no self-educated people: Only people who have refined their thinking against others who have gone through the same hard-earned process of learning, experience, and feedback, and assholes who listen to themselves too much.

Meanwhile, there are jobs. That depends what you want to do, and what other people are willing to pay you to do. In today’s markets, you have to be very careful because of the massive investment.

As far as: Should you go to college? Not without crunching the numbers, not anymore. If you don’t know what money is (that is, you’ve never paid your own bills), don’t go until you do. (Unless your parents can pay for it out of pocket.) Don’t go there to “find yourself,” either. What you will find is a lifestyle that is out of proportion to your actual income. Unless you pay your way through.

I had a nephew who had very high SATs. He didn’t want to go to college. I was the only one in the family who said, “Don’t go.” He got a job with a supermarket — actually one of the top performers on the Stock Market over 30 years — and by going to work everyday and demonstrating some smarts, was quickly tapped on the shoulder to be a manager. Like in two years.

My best friend in high school took a year off because of illness out of high school. Then he went to a six-month full time program in computer science. He was already making in the 50s by the time I graduated. I’ve never made as much money as he has.

IB Bill – - Recognizing BS as you say is a key; most now call it critical thinking, but it’s true that we should always keep a leery eye on what is BS and what isn’t, especially coming from the news.

I certainly have no qualms about anyone that wants to go to college trying to do so. Unfortunately the push for more and more graduates with their new diplomas eventually falls in the law of supply and demand. The more you have of something the less value it is, including a multitude of people with bachelor’s degrees full of knowledge of little value.

Back in the old days, before the Gramscian “long march through the institutions”, colleges actually did teach people to distinguish valid facts and reasoning from BS.

These days, though, they do just the opposite. Colleges and universities, with hardly any exceptions, are hard-left/eco-radical/pro-Islamic indoctrination factories who take what would otherwise be fairly sensible kids and pour them full of nonsense.

If the median income is higher than the average it also means that the field puts a premium on competency, or that incompetence is penalised. It is a signal for the fellow of below average abilities to avoid that field. The opposite holds true for someone who is really able.

My grandfather dropped out of school after the 3rd grade. He went to work plowing fields with an ox. He saved his money, and when he was 18 he walked into the business school in San Antonio, took the entrance exam and passed it, earned a business degree. He became a bank manager.

Want to know how he did that? He helped his sisters do their homework every night. He also read everything he could get his hands on.

My father dropped out of college after one semester. It just wasn’t for him. He took a six week course in computer programming and got a job. That was in 1959, back in the days of giant main frames that ran on punch cards. He took another job offer ten years later and moved his family to South Texas. He designed and installed the computer network that all the banks and businesses run their accounts on down here. He also read everything he could get his hands on, and he was largely self-taught. He worked his way up to president of the company.

My mother never attended an hour of college. She raised four children, then took a job as an apartment manager. She took some courses, got a realtor’s license, then a broker’s license, and promptly went about building one of the largest and most successful real estate companies in the county. She made so much money that she bought the company.

I remember when I was a teen seeing her sitting on the couch reading this thick book on real estate law. Today, lawyers call her for advice on real estate law. She read one book. These guys went through four years of college and three years of law school, passed the bar exam, but they have to call her for advice? Go figure. She also reads everything she can get her hands on.

Who says home schooling, being self-taught, is for naught? I went to college because it was important to my parents. I don’t regret it, as I learned a lot. But I really didn’t need to go to college and earn a degree. I could have pursued any number of careers, except the ones that require a degree. But I’ll bet that I could take the bar exam today and pass it, even though I’ve never been to law school. Know why? Because I read everything I can get my hands on.

Roughly 25% of the adults in this country have a college degree. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell all dropped out of college. Richard Branson dropped out of high school. He is dyslexic and academia didn’t suit him. Yet these are some of the wealthiest and most successful men in the world. How does that compute?

” But I’ll bet that I could take the bar exam today and pass it, even though I’ve never been to law school. Know why? Because I read everything I can get my hands on.”

Gawains’ ghost, there’s a show on now about just that, I believe it’s called “Suits”. A young man that loved to read and remembered everything he read. Got kicked out of school for taking tests for his classmates. Went out and found a job working as a legal assistant or some such and his boss is trying to get him his law degree. He knows more that 3/4th of the lawyers in the firm he works for.

well, if all that you said about your family is true, you have never had to worry about money in your life. You know what the coal miner said to the richman when the richman admitted he had never worked a day in his life? “you ain’t missed a damn thing”.

See this word work puts a whole bunch of people in a state of twisted knickers and it shouldn’t be so! Do to the lack of parenting skills in the world today there is a dearth of understanding just what the word means and what it means in what context it is used. English is a language more illogical than any other on the planet, yet it is almost universal and in the business world it is a necessary skill.

But to those who say I have never worked a day in my life. To most that would mean they have never been compelled to produce for the benefit of others. But to some it would mean that he enjoyed what he did so much that it was not work to him.

I have a degree in Mechanical engineering. Did not use it for more than six months. Some have told me that it was a waste for me to study for it. I told them that it was something that made me happy to do and the knowledge I gained from the study would make solving problems more efficient for me. But I loved to cook so I went to work as a cook to learn the business and retired as a owner. Then I went into the ditch digging business because I wanted to know how it worked and today I can tell you with certainty that I have never worked a day in my life. And I have the calloused hands to prove it!

You want to know how I paid for my trip to Philmont when I was a Boy Scout? I picked watermelon and hoed cabbage fields for an entire summer in the South Texas heat.

I can’t even remember all the jobs I’ve had in my life, but a brief summary would include lawn mower, pool cleaner, burger flipper, bus boy, waiter, bartender, convenience store clerk, and shipping clerk. I’ve also been a substitute teacher, a full time teacher, and an adjunct professor. Now I’m a realtor. You think that’s a life of privelege?

Yeah, my grandfather dropped out of school after the third grade. He plowed fileds with an ox for ten years, then walked into a business school, passed the entrance exam, and became a bank manager. He also robbed the bank to pay for his wife’s lung surgery when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. And went to prison for it.

Yeah, my father served in the Navy, right out of high school. He was a morse code operator in the Azores, of all places. He then dropped out of college after one semester, to a six-week course in programming, and became some sort of computer genius.

Yeah, my mother never went to college. She raised four children, became an apartment manager, got her real estate license, and then bought the company. She happens to be one of the most respected brokers and most successful business women in the state, thank you very much.

Me, I went to college. I earned a BS, a BA, and an MA. I taught school for twenty years, and if you think that’s a walk in the park you’re deluded.

Now, I stand around in repossessed homes, taking pictures and notes, doing research, writing price opinions and ads, picking up and putting up signs. You think that’s a life of privelege? The heat index is 120 degrees in an un-air conditioned home down here. I’ve walked out of houses completely drenched. When you bluejeans are wet, you’ll know what sweat is.

I’d like to see you come down here and spend a day doing what I do. It would kill you.

I paid more in taxes last year than you probably earned. And I’ll pay more this year. So you can kiss my rich white ass.

getting insulted by John Houseman at his withering best (or is that worst?) — genuinely terrified me.

Kathy, years ago when he was attending art college here, I knew Sebastian, one of Houseman’s sons. According to him. the character seen in the Paper Chase was exactly what he was like in personal life.

A young friend of mine is studying anti-terrorism studies at a newly created University. He finishes and, hopefully, graduates in six weeks. No jobs in the field, unless tutoring younger students while doing a Masters. He could have joined the army, the police force or a bank much earlier in the piece to carve out this niche. What has he learnt at Uni? Terrorism is unlikely to occur, less likely than a road fatality and, besides, is a product of colonialism and oppression. It’s our fault if it occurs…

1) Road fatalities are common enough to be a problem. If he is unaware of that, he can start reading the local news wherever he lives. Or he can just look out the car window to see what is happening around him.

2) Terrorism is a product of ISLAM, which for 1400 years has been an engine of colonialism and oppression. The mainstream media doesn’t cover any of that, but he can get the news stories on that from any number of blogs, including mine.

Here in the U.S. you can not get rid of your college loans by filing for bankruptcy. If you can not self finance, you had better make sure that the investment in college tuition will help you pay back that loan. Otherwise, you’ll end up an indentured servant to that loan. Aren’t all those marxists/communists running the Universities great?

“Aren’t all those marxists/communists running the Universities great?”

Yeah…swell, ain’t it? It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly “educated” people manifestly never learned the Law of Supply and Demand and the concept of Return on Investment as applied to their own education.

I also didn’t go to college, but went to sea and learned to maintain and fix ships’ electrical and electronic systems. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had newly-minted 3rd Mates and 3rd Engineers, fresh out of the academies, whine that I made more money than they did.

My stock response is to ask them how many classmates they had graduated with, how many had graduated the year before, and how many were graduating the year after they had…I then ask them how many academies graduating entry-level officers every year into the miniscule sea-going maritime industry America has.

I usually see the light bulb go on in their eyes right before they get REALLY pissed off.

Most college freshmen would make a far better living from spending a fraction of what they do and learn Welding…we ALWAYS need GOOD welders.

I hear that the North Koreans will be looking for good TIG and MIG welders so that their rockets don’t blow up…

One of my brothers dropped out of high school. He later got his GED and learned how to be a machinist and welder. He was very good at it. Back in the 1980s, a local computer firm hired him to run their prototype CAD/CAM shop. He’d been doing most of their prototypes while working for a local sheet metal shop so they knew him well. He was told, “We were looking for someone with a Master’s Degree in Engineering and 6 years of experience, but you’ll do.” They knew he had the skills to do the job. With today’s emphasis on credentials, that likely wouldn’t happen.

At the time, he drag raced motorcycles on the weekends. He took the job with the proviso that when he wasn’t building parts for them, he could use their equipment to build parts for his motorcycle. It was the fastest 2-stroke in America and he ranked as high as 2nd in the nation in his class.

Steve died of cancer last year. Before that, he’d worked for many companies building aerospace components. He was damned good at what he did and rightfully earned more than I did with my two Master’s degrees.

You don’t necessarily need a degree to be successful. Degree or not, you need to have skills that people are willing to pay you to perform. You can have more degrees than a thermometer but if you don’t have marketable job skills, you’re out of luck.

Looking back now in my “Middle Years,” I can honestly say that if I had it to do all over again, I would never have gone to college. Never. It was a complete waste of time. I didn’t learn anything in college that was actually useful in the business world and was only able to find a job after I learned a useful trade. And, what was really interesting is that, once I learned this trade, I was almost always guaranteed a job, in good financial times or bad. Even when one of the companies I worked for went out of business, I found a new job a few weeks later. All because I had a useful trade. And I certainly could have gotten my jobs even if I did NOT go to college.

I do know that high schools and colleges do feed a lot of lies to students by claiming they can be just about whatever they want to be after they have their degrees. That is just, plain, junk. Unless you have a skill that is in demand at the time of your graduation, you will either be unemployed or stuck in a job that has nothing to do with your major. And to pay over $100,000 these days to learn that lesson is very bitter indeed. We need a lot more trade schools in this country and more companies encouraging apprentices in their fields. We also need to stop encouraging the lie that everybody needs to go to college.

Yes, and a good university will do that. I couldn’t say whether the ivies do that. What they do seem to turn out are confident speakers in meetings. Can they stand to hear the truth? I couldn’t say on that issue either.

I went straight to the USAF out of High School. My folks had me in their mid 40′s, last of 4 kids and there was NO WAY I was going to have my soon-to-be retired Dad to pay for my college, trade school, etc.,

I used the G.I Bill and received my Associates at the CC of the Air Force (CCAF). Unfortunately I was stationed in CA where I did my last 2 years (both school and military) at UC Davis.

On occasion attending class in my BDU’s due to going/coming from work when attending class. Admittedly I did wear the uniform time-to-time to irk my professors. Who were *shocker* uber-Leftist d-bags.

The professor’s were irked by both my uniform and my obtaining a degree in the same field I was working in the military.

Whereas their, ‘This will never occur..’ comments were combatted with my saying I had indeed experienced such phenomena.

The profs would respond to bring my disk (hey it’s the mid-late 90′s!) to prove such an occurrence.

I couldn’t imagine being a tweener-20 something with Conservative leanings today in those Illiberal labyrinth ‘higher learning’ institutions.

Suffice to say when applying to various jobs, the interested employers ALWAYS commented on the uncommon locations I’d worked. They could care less about my BS.

I tried college for three years when I graduated high school and it didn’t work out so well. I was absolutely unprepared to appreciate what I could learn and, although I was good at math, didn’t have the appreciation for what a technical degree could afford me.

I spent 6 years active Army and spent a lot of time in Iraq. It helped me to grow up significantly and now I’ve returned to school to become a petroleum engineer. I’m performing better in my classes than most of my “peers” who are 8-10 years younger than I am and when I graduate, it’s all but guaranteed that I will be offered 3 or more jobs by energy companies and probably start between $90-$100 K. I’m not saying this to brag but to illustrate that the demand for technically concentrated degrees is definitely there. The problem, I believe, is that kids want everything handed to them and desire to do the absolute minimum amount of work to receive their degrees. I see this in my classes every day.

I believe the solution to the epidemic of kids seeing college as an extension of their un-challenging high school careers is some work. There should be a minimum two years of some sort of service related experience whether it be a branch of the military or something else. Experience that informs these children that the world does not, in fact, revolve around them. The service would be voluntary in the end but perhaps required to attend a university. These are idealized concepts, I know, but perhaps can be a guide to what some individual parents require their own children to do before they pay for their school for them.

I am always surprised that in articles that talk about what professions make the most money, sales is never mentioned. It’s not cool, and looked down upon (even in the companies that need them) but a good salesperson will become rich. It does take a certain talent, however many aspects can be learned. I encourage women (in the majority of these positions) who are customer service or secretary type people to start going into sales if they want to progress. Not many do. Think of who is needed most in a bad economy.

Josh is wrong. Josh is almost certainly not in one of the STEM fields. No one that I know in that general category makes less than $80,000. Almost all make over $100,000. Many, way over. Jobs are available in engineering, math, computer science (not so much IT), med-tech, etc.

The best thing I ever did was get a nursing degree at a state college. My plan was that it would be my insurance. Started off full-time when newly married…to as needed during the kiddies growing years…to full time when my husband lost his job…and part-time now in my widowhood:( Always jobs with lots of flexibility…not to mention knowledge that helps with everyday life:) (Not the easiest job in the world tho ~ but fulfilling.) God Bless America.

Very valuable information, thank you. I’m glad it worked out so well for you. I always respected our nurses, as a pharmacy technician in the Air Force delivering meds to the different floors, and giving IV-ingredient compatability information to help them manage so much workload safely.

I find this article offensive. First of all, it is misleading. The author did indeed go to college–just not a four-year university. She did receive two years of training in a post-secondary environment.

Second, not everyone has the intellectual capacity to major in STEM subjects. I certainly didn’t.

There is nothing wrong with an English degree. In fact, this article is not particularly well written and the author could benefit from a few advanced writing classes (despite the fact that she works in communications/media). Many English majors go on to work in business and industry (not all become teachers or laze-abouts).

There is nothing wrong with degrees in sociology, psychology, womens’ studies, etc. It depend upon the career goals of the individual student and how that degree will help the students achieve those goals. It is the students’ responsibility to look into career options, internships, etc., and to have a Plan B.

If everyone got a degree in something “practical” like engineering, there would be an over-supply of engineers (which there already is in my community), and a lack of individuals trained to supply needs in other less-visible fields.

The issue is not useless degrees. The issue is: 1) college is expensive and too many students are taking out loans they cannot pay back–again, see my talking point above–this can be solved if students choose the institution wisely and plan ahead in terms of major/career, 2) students and parents feel cheated by liberal professors who teach biased material. This can also be solved by choosing schools/professors wisely. Students need to become saavy consumers, 3) There is an overall lack of jobs due to the economy and the political choices of our leaders.

You’ve fallen into the fallacy. If you are going thousands of dollars into debt for a degree you feel you need a plan B just in case, you might want to re-think. Education is a fine thing but you don’t go deeply in debt for an education, you go into debt to gain skills that will improve your ability to earn money.

But the key lesson in your comment is that you can skip college and find your own way.
Or you can attend college, earn a degree in some non-technical field then find your own way but now with student loan debt. Heck, even with a STEM degree, you still have to find your own way although the ability to do math and apply problem solving is a plus.

The Big Lie of college and it was true when I went back in the early 1980s as it is today, is that it really doesn’t add to your job prospects. Without experience, you are simply someone who learned how to pass tests. The willingness of employers to risk taking one an unskilled college graduate has declined precipitously since the mid-1970s. Exceptions for skill specific degrees do exist but there’s not much call for entry level philosophers and, more and more, English majors without a prove track record as a writer.

I would argue that everyone needs a Plan B. Even an engineer, a plumber, a sales person. It’s the nature of our economy and constantly changing technology, etc.

Yes, experience is extremely important–which is what I said. Students need to gain this while in college with summer jobs, internships, etc. Too many graduate without having put in effort beyond their classes.

There is a way to get a college degree with minimal debt: do the first two years at a cheap community college, take classes online so that you can work while attending school, etc. But we have all of these helicopter parents who want their kids to attend the best Ivy League school–$$.

The point is: take a look at the job ads, or talk to my relatives who own small businesses. Even the crummiest jobs today require a bachelor’s degree. You can have all the experience in the world and never get an interview if you don’t at least have that degree. So, yes, a lot of education is problematic today and students are going into too much debt, but don’t go telling young people that college is a waste of time and money and that they don’t need a degree. You are condemning all but the lucky ones to minimum wage jobs. The philosophy major will be flipping burgers for a while, but he will eventually find something. It’s going to take a lot more for the person with only a high school diploma.

Good points about a degreed person eventually having more options than the non-degreed.

Will it be at an acceptable cost?

That’s the life-long (chilhood and early teen years) question, that parents must DEVELOP and refine as they are involved in their childrens lives.

Vo-Tech is no longer in schools – very sad.

How to test teens proficiencies in wood-working or plumbling if pop and mom are not wood-cutters or handy-persons, and the schools have no programs?

How to research non-liberal colleges?

I lucked into Wayland Baptist University via the military and night classes, so I had no liberal studies required, or liveral influence of any kind. No Phi Kappa anything, which was stellar. I had enough going on with the military, 4 beautiful “dependents” as the military refers to them, and night classes to get the best grades in. It later mattered greatly, as my classmate just “getting a degree” did not qualify for the Federal Government’s internships which required 3.5 GPA or higher.

As I posted above: You don’t necessarily need a degree to be successful. Degree or not, you need to have skills that people are willing to pay you to perform. You can have more degrees than a thermometer but if you don’t have marketable job skills, you’re out of luck.

I would love to see the federal government ejected from the student loan business, and the federal support withdrawn from the banks. This solves the higher education bubble in a heartbeat, and it would also serve to end or severely curtail frivolous study programs that teach no marketable skills.

Imagine if student loan debt could be discharged in bankruptcy (it currently isn’t, and you practically need to be permanently disabled to be awarded forgiveness on those loans). Universities are no longer awash in billions in free money. Banks start to analyze which degrees are likely to result in the borrower paying back the loan. Student loans are no longer given to anyone who can fog a mirror. Universities, desperate to attract students, lower tuition costs and eliminate programs that don’t teach actual skills. We once again return to the era where someone can put themselves through college flipping burgers.

Skilled tradesmen and technical college students spend a fraction on their own education and laugh at those of us who spent tens of thousands of dollars on a piece of paper. Personally, I’m encouraging my sons to apprentice themselves out in a trade or go to technical school. There will always be jobs for people who can fix things.

How would you recommend the U.S. lead the world again technology-wise, or what kind of Federal Government activity in university life might you recommend?

Government intervention, not to mention a language that permits easier memorization of long strings of numbers (really) works exceedingly well in China. There among many countries is the raised bar (and as an interesting note, a decidedly non-liberal standard) the U.S. must get to in order to protect our internet security, our trade, and our military/space complex.

Ah yes, China, that paragon of human rights and environmental responsibility. We would do well to emulate them. Maybe we could start by repealing the thirteenth amendment. Pretty much the only way we can compete on manufacturing wages (except maybe tariffs, which Congress is derelict in their duties by not imposing the crushing type on all Chinese imports).

Let’s also not forget repealing due process as well as allowing cruel and unusual punishments. Where else are we going to get the aforementioned slave labor for the triumphant return of our manufacturing base?

Or…we could stop or severely curtail trade with nations like China who keep prices down through human rights abuses, environmental abuses, and outright theft of U.S. technology. Let’s also try my idea of eliminating government backstopping of student loans and watch tuitions plummet. You want us to lead the world in technology? Then the feds need to stop subsidizing $100,000 sociology and women’s studies degrees. Let’s use that long-lost idea of free market forces to encourage colleges to utilize their resources on education in marketable skills.

I *did* go to college and the day I received my B.A. was the day I began to travel a path that can only be called Nightmare Alley.

I got my degree in 1988. By 1990 I had my first layoff, the 2nd occurred in 1992, 3rd in 1995.. followed by temp jobs, household moves between jobs when I couldn’t afford the rent anymore. Moves to smaller and smaller places for myself and my two children (I was also the sole support for my children after the divorce). We made jokes about needing smaller and smaller trucks to move our things and went from a full size Ryder truck in the beginning to hauling it all in the back of a pickup truck.

The *real* nightmare was not just the job losses and time spent unemployed while seeking another position… it was the Angel of Death barking at my heels.. or better known as “the Student Loan.” I borrowed $12,000 and despite paying monthly payments for the last 8 years, forfeiting 3 Income Tax Refunds.. my balance is still over $25,000 ($15,000 of that is principal). Sometime after the 1992 layoff I didn’t qualify for a forbearance and went into default. Of course, living with family, friends, and even in a tent for a short time made my “default” status the least of my worries. Not to worry though… *they* kept tabs and adding to it.

In Dec. 2010 I lost the job I’ve held for almost 10 years and although I’ve still made payments using my unemployment, that will run out in another month. I’m now comfortably past “middle age” and jobs are not only scarce, they seem to have vanished. I figure death will overtake me before this nightmare ends.

Pat yourself on the back for avoiding those Ivy Leagued Halls and not reaching for that bit of Parchment. You were the smart one. I foolishly believed in the “dream” my parents taught me.. Go to school, get a good education, and you’ll have the promise of a good job and life. Silly me for believing it.

For the record, I didn’t get a “frivolous” and useless degree. I majored in English with an emphasis in Communications. Where I erred was going into Technical Support shortly before the jobs fled to India and other countries. In 20 years I managed to go full circle from the Cashier jobs I had before college to the last job I held as (yes, you guessed it) a Cashier for Walmart. I should have just kept the first job, skipped the college, and I would have been better off.

From The Way Of All Flesh [Samuel Butler]……….”he did not see that the education cost the children far more than it cost him, inasmuch as it cost them the power of earning their living easily rather than helped them towards it, and ensured their being at the mercy of their father for years after they had come to an age when they should have been independent.”

Easy to say when you didn’t grow up during the Bush years and have to suffer through his economy, the lack of jobs, especially for women, teenagers, minorities, and gays. All that is available now are low-paying, demeaning jobs at Wal-Mart, who donate large amounts of cash to Republicans to assure that cheap labor keeps coming and so that there are no other jobs that would offer a real paycheck. Yet, all Republicans want to blame Obama, who is black. Coincidence? I think not.

AH Now we can all relax, we finally have our first “It’s Bush’s Fault” posting.

I was wondering when that was going to happen.

The problem with our economy and the devaluation of college degrees is simply this silly notion that some guys in business developed. The “service based economy”, let’s get rid of all of those nasty old smoke stack and manufacturing industries and shuffle paper. Note to economists, the economies that are doing the least worst in this global depression are those that actually manufacture things, gizmos, and gadgets. With the “service based economy” came the need for overpaid and under qualified MBA’s in Finance to “manage for stockholder value” meaning fudge the balance sheet so their stock options would make them millionaires. Since these clowns know nothing about management they don’t run the company, they play with the finances and follow useless outdated strategic paradigms such as economies of scale and cost advantage. Of course the B-schools jack up their tuitions everytime the Feds announce an increase in the student loan limit. So the student loans are like Medicare in the 1960′s, no cost containment. If the student loan programs would only fund 70% of the tuition, university tuitions would drop like a rock.

The next thing to remember is most universities are businesses doing all of this wonderful research. So we have professors and your local Nobel Laureate off trotting around the world scrounging for research grants and the poor sap graduate assistant is teach the undergraduate courses the professor is supposed to be teaching. I worked on the administrative staff at the University of California and I know for a fact the chemistry and biology departments had UNDERGRADUATES teaching freshman chemistry and biology. The reason entrance requirements are high is the universities want kids to be able do do it on their own without any help from the faculty.

Women’s studies, minority studies? We need those programs but not to the extent they are being pushed in universities. If you ever read critical theory, which is the basis of most ethnic and minority studies, you would find their paradigm is straight out of Engels, Marx, and Hegel. Pure class warfare rhetoric and economic junk science. Name one successful communist economy…no China is not communist, their economy is growing because they decided they could be a capitalist oligarchy, much in the George Orwell Animal Farm sense.

They don’t teach anything worthwhile in college any more. Heck, I was being taught in HIGH SCHOOL in English Lit what they are teaching at the University Of California to their Lit Majors…

hmmm.. using your reasoning (or lack thereof), we can assume that any person of color who criticized George Bush was a racist as well? If demanding accountability or finding fault with someone in political office is simply because people are “racist” then perhaps we do need more people to go to college and sharpen their reasoning skills?

Economic trends take years to develop and if you were suffering hardship during the Bush years, it would stand to reason you should be pointing the finger at his predecessor. Who was it that almost turned the White House into a Motel 6, made promises he couldn’t keep to get members of congress to sell their souls to get NAFTA passed? I do believe it was Clinton also that got MFN eliminated and opened the flood gates to Chinese products, pushed to get GATT passed and further eroded our industrial base??? GWB didn’t help either since he worshiped at the Free Trade altar too. Both parties are at fault for doing nothing to ease the ever increasing regulations, raising corporate taxes (we’re the highest now), and giving incentives to companies to move off-shore. Short of firing up Air-Force One and a few cargo planes, Congress, Lobbyists, and other special interests put us in our current employment and economic situation more than any single President but Obama has decided to apply the WD-40 to make it go even faster.

I confess: I’ma college dropout. I too think it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I had to learn to think outside the box. Be innovative. A college degree may help you get a job but it is completely useless for starting and running your own business.

When I graduated in the mid 70s a lot of my friends who had majored in the humanities had problems finding good jobs. Many were underemployed in retail and service jobs. Some of us used an MBA program to get boosted up into a position that had a career path. We helped fuel a boom in advanced business degrees in that period.

I was lucky in high school, college and multiple advanced programs to have some teachers who valued true critical thinking. I also had some who would dock your grade if you didn’t repeat the largely left wing BS they were pushing. Over the years I have also self educated in several fields. As I watched some others who were only self taught struggle the two shortcomings of that path to knowledge became obvious. One. There can be glaring holes in one’s knowledge base. Two, if you haven’t acquired critical thinking skills self education creates the intellectual equivalent of a magpie or a pack rat. Such people can recite lots of interesting facts but they seldom arrive at a coherent worldview.

College was great for lazy people like me.Afterwards,I got a government job and never worked a day in my life. Retired at 60 because my pension was two grand more than my salary. How to be a successful government slug: get a job no one wants done.

An interesting discussion. I have a BA in history. Have never used it as I went into the hotel business as I worked as a bellhop while at university (that’s what we call it up here). The wealthiest person in my family is my older brother who quit university after two weeks and started selling vacuums door to door. Ten short years later he was vice president of the company.

A couple of things. In my day, we had tech schools and high schools. Those who went to tech schools went into the trades and most of the people I know who did that are doing very well running successful small businesses. These days the emphasis is on college/university education as the road to success. A model that is flawed for many reasons.

We need to return to an education model that focuses on all the career choices available and this needs to be done at the high school level. We should not be pushing students into college/university as the best choice. Germany has a very successful education system which does this. We have a severe shortage in the trades here in Canada because in high school students no longer have the option of starting to learn one at an early age.

I love history but in hindsight, I wouldn’t mind being a well read electrician either. And more importantly I would not mind if my son aspired to be that either.

The theory regarding the pay disparity between teachers and athletes is not really accurate. There are actually many thousands of professional baseball players. What is in short supply are jobs at the Major League level. So if jobs are in short supply and candidates are abundant, then the team owners should make the rules, right?

My wife is a corporate recruiter in the high tech industry. There are some technologies where maybe a few hundred people in all of Canada have the needed skills and so job requirements go unfilled. Yet these people can command maybe $90-$100/hr. Not bad money, but nowhere near what a major leaguer makes. So what’s the difference? Why can pro athletes (not to mention top musicians, actors and other performers) command such lavish sums of money? It’s because people are willing to pay money to watch them work. Advertisers are willing to pay money for spectators to see their ads while people are watching the performers.

About 15 years ago, my wife (an RN) worked in a periodontic practice doing IV sedation. She made about $15 an hour. In the same office, the dental hygenists were making $45 an hour. As I explained to her, her salary was overhead. The hygenists generated revenue for the practice. You go in to get your teeth cleaned and get charged about $100, the hygenist gets $45 and the practice pockets $55.

The key to making a high salary is to generate revenue, not to be part of overhead.

“…just look at the grief Rick Santorum received for daring to raise the subject…”
Kathy Shaidle

Yeah. Santorum’s campaign put the lie to the claim that the public wants a president who’ll lead. Instead, the majority-mouthbreathing public – they elected Obama, didn’t they? – demands a president who’ll slavishly follow what everybody knows is so, even if it’s downright worng.

As Clarey explains in Worthless: yes, in general, people with degrees earn more than people who just have a high school diploma — BUT only those who have degrees in fields of study that are in high demand in the real-life workforce.

You mean like my friends who have degrees in engineering, computer science, architecture, and dozens of other “in high demand” degrees who have been bussing tables and flipping burgers for decades since leaving college?

It’s oh so easy to sneer down at the college kid from the comfort and safety of an established career.

It’s not just the students’ fault. In fact very little of it is their fault– they’re kids with zero life experience getting suckered by adult professionals set on selling a diploma. Who do you EXPECT to win that particular confrontation?

Kids are scammed into getting into tens of thousands of dollars in debt for an “education” in their chosen field that is ninety percent mandatory fluff and ten percent outdated training. The adults in their life swore before God Almighty that this was the only way they would avoid a horrible, hopeless life of burger flipping. The kids get out, they find out their diploma is WORTHLESS, and when they cry out in outrage over their lost time and money, those same self-serving old bastards laugh in their face and make stupid jokes about philosophy majors.

I especially like how we were told by the wise old hoary headed sages that we should pursue an education in our true heart’s desire. Then when we couldn’t find work in whatever field we threw our passion, those same crusty old farts shook their hoary heads about how “they should have gotten a PRACTICAL major.” And that would be? Who knows, by the time you get out of college the market for your degree is already gone!

Used car salesmen WISH they had this kind of a rigged system set up for them.

I’m another dropout. After two years of college (majoring in English literature) I realized I was going nowhere. I dropped out, went to a free local community school to learn word processing in 1981. That course took exactly four weeks.

Within a year I was a supervisor for a large insurance company. From there, my career just grew and grew, barring the occasional Democrat hiccup in the economy. At present I work four days a week in what is probably the easiest job I’ve ever had, at just under a six figure salary. Everyone here assumes I have some advanced engineering degree. If they only knew…

My wife has an advanced degree and makes about $20K less than I do a year. In fact, all of her friends with advanced degrees make less money than I do. Frankly, I’ve never been impressed with the advanced degree folks. Usually when I try to talk about books, I find that I’m the only one who has actually read the books — they all just read the Cliff Notes in college.

The skills after military training prepare you for anything life throws your way. I did that for 20 years(enlisted at 17 w/ GED)
but to make really great money I have noticed that people skills are high up on the required list. Can you introduce yourself to a large group? Can you speak to a large group. Can you look someone in the eye as you ask intelligent questions about their work or business challenges. I make 100+ per year with a high school GED. I got into the IT field as an instructor of HW/SW (instructor skill learned in NAVY) I now work in Engineering pre-sales where people skills combined with technical skill are paying me the most I have earned in my life. I am teaching my twin boys how to shake hands like my Father taught me and how to carry on a conversation with adults. I expect them to do at least 4 years in the military. but will not pay for college until after they have left the Military if they still want to go. I have had my drinks poured for me by some of the most educated kids on the planet and the stories I have heard about not being able to find a job in their field would fill a library.

I agree with this article a great deal, but I think that the author needlessly puts off part of the audience.

I’m thinking of people who have indeed worked hard at acquiring degrees, learning skills that others don’t have, and then finding themselves hard pressed to find a job.

What these people needed to understand (before they spent all that time and money) was this: Not all difficult work receives payment. Likewise, not all hard-earned skill receives payment. That’s just the reality of life.

The sooner one learns that, the better.

Know what you do to earn a living, and know what you do for yourself. If you’re lucky, these are the same. But they’re often not.

***
I have a BS in physics. I’ve never used this degree except as a credential. Fortunately, as a faculty brat, I had zero tuition.

It’s in most students’ best interest to declare bankruptcy following most university degrees. The length of time it would take to pay off a student loan is now much longer than the 7-year burden of having been bankrupt. Im looking at roughly 10 years.

Why wouldn’t I just declare bankruptcy and rebuild my credit over the remaining 3 years I would be paying off the loan anyway? It’s not like I would be able to get a home or other loan saddled with this credit exposure and debt, anyway!

I got a B.A. in Psych and an M.A. in something that was interesting way back then.

I work as a blackjack dealer. Surprisingly, it’s not such a bad job. The tips add up to about 40-50k a year in my city. Not much advancement potential, but then again, the dealers usually make more than the floormen. It’s way more than I made as a college instructor, or working in an office.

I got family pressure to switch to a better “career”. So… back in school, studying more with the ultra-liberal morons, for a field that’s saturated, and in the end, probably will make me about the same amount of money. But will be more “respectable.” But the best bang for my buck in education remains Dealer School. That paid off in multiples.

Though I did not graduate, I am still sorry I went. Waste of time and money. But I do know a few people who graduated. Most of them went into teaching. And they either can not find a job in the field, or if they did, they dropped out of teaching. Some said teaching was not what they were expecting. Some had other interests.

One thing that bothered me, was the propaganda about how much more money college graduates made. It was everywhere. In the campus papers. In fliers. On posters. It never made sense to me. First, I suspected a rat was afoot somehow. And second, there was an unmistakable message, making nothing but money, or too much money, was somehow bad. I was an art major.

I will note the following. Maybe the seventies were different. But the most common majors were either business, or accounting. You never had to ask what someone’s major was. The answer was one of those two things. Or teaching. It was like living among the pod people. At least that is how I looked at it at the time.

The field was not the mistake, though. Just going to college was. I wound up a factory worker, who still writes poetry on occasion. College sucks. Just like disco, and the seventies. But I remember the dreams of youth.

That’s right, take advice about the “worthlessness” of higher education from someone whose blog shows he can’t even punctuate correctly or write a grammatical sentence. Oh, and if you actually read the blog, he’s a self-proclaimed lazy loser who tries to make a virtue of his contemptible vices. In deriding those who try to advance themselves, he simply wants company for his own idleness and fecklessness. Great model he is!

As for the value of a college education, it can be whatever you choose to make of it, and those who claim to have gained nothing from it should look in the mirror to see who’s responsible for that.

Like some of the commenters above, I am surprised to learn that Ms. Shaidle actually went to community college. That is not the same as not going to college at all. In fact, I think she should answer “Toronto Community College” (or whatever its name was), not “I didn’t,” when asked where she went to college. Maybe things are culturally different in Canada, but in the U.S. community college is definitely a form of college.

Anyway, I do have a more substantial critique, prompted by Mr. Clarey’s screed below – the criticisms of college in general (as opposed to those that criticize modern leftist curricula specifically) seem to have a very utilitarian (very different from conservative) bent. Most people (Ms. Shaidle being an exception – whether Mr. Clarey is one seems more doubtful) lack the patience and discipline to be autodidacts. There should be people who know about Plato and Dante and Shakespeare and the Founding Fathers in the world, not just people who can make gadgets. If you can become well-read without going to college, great, but many people cannot. Believe or not, laziness can lead to avoiding the humanities just as much as to avoiding the sciences!

P.S. I was inspired by this to look up other reviews of the book, and this is far from the only one to mention the bad grammar and generally bad writing. (What does he think “behoove” means, anyway?)

Ooooo! You cut deep man! I can’t punctuate correctly!? that’s you’re BEST??? (notice the incorrect use of “you’re” when it SHOULD BE “your”…I’ll continue despite this grammatical faux paw) Horrors of horrors. How does the world revolve without correct punctuation!?

You keep lying to yourself Charlie (notice the lack of a comma before your name? See the lack of punctuation? Hang on…..gimme a second….gimme a second…OK, just got back. Apparently the world has not blown itself apart because of the lack of a comma! Thank god, because there might have been some real consequences to that!)

You keep focusing on punctuation and “dangling participles” and your degree in “African Bulgarian Poetry” while me and the rest of the adults will focus on content and intellect and working up the wealth to pay for your lazy parasitic ass.

My father (he got his MsSc late in his 30′s while working hard in his own bussiness) always told me that everything eventually goes down to how good you are in buying and selling, and how good product you offer. That vendor is the only human profession par excellence and that I should consider to educate myself to get a skill, not a piece of paper, be it through university or as a self taught, but the skill, not the paper.

I found both the original article and the comments very interesting. I got my AB (physics) in ’53, my MS (Electrical Engineering) in ’55, my PhD (mathematics) in ’61. In the Air Force, and later in civilian life, I worked in R&D. Perhaps I should put “worked” in quotes. I really enjoyed what I did for a living. It sometimes amazes me that I got paid for it. But I couldn’t have done it without going to college, and later to grad school. You can’t learn STEM just from books. You need someone to guide you through it, and explain the parts the books don’t explain. (I’ve written textbooks, and I know you can’t put everything in there. A teacher who knows the subject is still needed.)

Having said that, I agree that for many people, a trade school, a community college (I spent 6 years as trustee for the local community college), or an apprenticeship is a much better route to take. One summer during college I worked in a steel mill, and had a chance to see the apprenticeship program there in operation (I wasn’t in it; I had an office job). I’m all in favor of such programs. Nevertheless, in all those routes, a teacher is still necessary.

Finally, note that I got an AB, not a BS. Through some quirk of university regulations, I had to get an AB instead of a BS (chemistry majors could get a BS). Squeezing in all the physics and math courses I wanted, plus the liberal arts courses I was required to take, meant that I took the equivalent of 5 years of college in 4 years. It was a heavy load. Nevertheless, I have never regretted taking those courses in history, literature, composition, etc. They gave me a much better appreciation of the world, and what happened before I was born, than I would otherwise have had.

If I have any message, it is to learn something for which there is an economic demand. In addition, learn everything you can about history, literature, politics, and the arts. My high school English teacher used to say, a technical education teaches you how to make a living. A liberal education teaches you how to live. She was right.

I was with you right up until you suggested that studying a STEM field, and, presumably, actually becoming competent in the field, would make you in high demand. STEM job markets in the USA and UK have grown more and more dysfunctional since the 1980s according to the information available*. Unfortunately, STEM compensaton per actual hour worked doesn’t compare well with many other fields, nor does employment security.

The USA now has some 1.8M (that’s mega for million) unemployed (actively seeking work and “not in the labor force”) and under-employed engineers (which BLS consider to be fully-employed coffee servers, blue jean sales-people, pet-sitters, leaf-rakers, etc.). Age discrimination typically kicks in for STEM workers at the age of 35, and, no, continuous learning does little good , in part because there are too many potential things to learn and hence directions to jump, but mainly because there is simply a glut of STEM talent in the USA – both domestic and foreign.

The hot skill of the month, the praised conference presentation, the frequent attaboys, become “your record is very impressive but we have no appropriate opportunities at this time” the next week… and, “No, we’re not interested in sponsoring you for a new security clearance, in flying you in for an interview, or relocating you. We’re only looking for an ideal candidate down to the 12th ‘skill’ in our list with the brand-name and specific third dewey decimal version designation”.

Me? I earned about 4 PhDs, a couple dozen master’s, scores of bachelor’s… for other people — tutoring them, crunching their stats, holding their hands, explaining the material in short little words and sentences many of them (including their profs in a few cases) did not understand, but no credentials (though I did earn certs in sys admin; data-base analysis, design and performance tuning; advanced mechanical design). None of my class and study time was wasted — even the most bizarre bits have proved useful on the job — but few of my jobs have leveraged my primary knowledge, skills and proclivities more than 75%.

* This is one reason why it’s referred to as the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression.